The Curious Incident of the Stars in the Night Time – the Out-Take
by Doris the Younger
Summary: Mycroft Holmes and Donna Noble have both survived the Doctor's reboot of the universe. Together, they had to face the most harrowing situation imaginable-but why on Earth would that experience convince two such dissimilar people to team up? It's elementary. The missing middle of my story 'The Curious Incident of the Stars in the Night-Time'. Nope, don't own anything.
1. A government office in Whitehall

**Tuesday, July 06, 2010 **

_What could have happened to Donna Noble?_

Mycroft Holmes wearily returned the red handset to its phone cradle and rested his chin on the heels of his hands. Donna's mobile was still out of service. He'd dialed her mother's number dozens of times over the past eleven days, but no one ever picked up.

After an alarmingly existential encounter with an alien time machine, Mycroft had found himself back in his own Whitehall office, safe and sound. But as the ensuing days passed, he found that neither the familiar surroundings nor its trappings of power were much of a comfort to him. The gleaming mahogany desk with its security-hardened telephone. His corner office looking down onto Richmond Terrace. The state-of-the-art computer station that was the center of his vast global intelligence web.

Least of all, the oil painting of a starry night that looked so much like a Vermeer.

On the one hand, he could recall Sherlock sending it to him with a typically smug, self-congratulatory note. On the other, he could not imagine that a painting of the Van Buren Supernova would have adorned the east wall of his office in the World Without Stars.

It was a paradox in paint, and it made his head hurt.

He had to find Donna Noble. If anyone in the world could understand what had happened to him, it would be Donna. She'd traveled in an alien's time machine, after all, and for a blessedly short span of time, her brain had been invaded by a Time Lord's mind.

Well, he'd scotched that at least. Mycroft's mind went back uneasily to the manner in which he'd done that. "Chop her hand off !" he'd shouted desperately at the TARDIS. "But be sure that the Doctor's mind is trapped inside it!"

He'd meant it for the best, but—what had happened to her after that?

_Where on Earth could Donna possibly be?_

And then it occurred to him—she'd been traveling in both space and time. She didn't have to BE on Earth. The Doctor could have scooped her up and whisked her away to anywhere in the universe, to the past, present—or future. In which case he'd never find her.

Mycroft's jaw clenched when he thought of Donna out there in the cosmos forever out of his reach, but there was no use dwelling on that scenario. To have a chance of accomplishing anything at all, he had to concentrate on the possible.

If and when Donna Noble returned home, he knew that she would pull up her socks, go on with her life, and get back to work—one-handed or no.

Now, what was her favorite contract agency? Mycroft furrowed his brow briefly and the name of the firm that had sent her to H.C. Clements popped into his head. Picking up the red phone again, he dialed its number.

"Mayfair Office Support—supporting you through thick and thin. Ms. Cholmondeley speaking," a woman answered him in nasal tones.

"Oh good," he replied in a disguised voice that was even more nasal. "I'm Mr. Hmmmm—the coordination secretary for the Whitehall Multi-Agency Building. My department has an immediate need for a contractor with certain specific skills, and for the right person we could offer a most attractive rate…"

He mentioned a figure that was perhaps a trifle on the stratospheric side and Ms. Cholmondeley immediately began to gabble about her firm's contractors' superb skills in the fields of word processing, database maintenance, and IT support.

"Yes, yes, but that's what not we need," Mycroft said dampeningly. Donna's hand had been cut off—he wasn't about to ask for keyboard work. Now, what else was she good at? It came to him immediately. "What we want is, umm… proficiency with the Dewey Decimal System."

A moment of dead silence was followed by the stammering reply, "I-I'm afraid we don't have a category for that. I'll have to search through the resumes manually."

"See that you do. I'll hold." At Mycroft's elbow a cooling cup of Earl Grey tea was sitting next to an untouched chef salad. This was the kind of task he usually assigned to underlings, but there was absolutely no one that he could tell about Donna.

Eventually the Mayfair woman returned to the phone. "Mr. Hoom? We do have a candidate who fits your requirement. As a matter of fact, she's available right now."

Hope rose in Mycroft's breast. That had to be Donna! "She lives in Greater London, I take it? Oh, Chiswick?"

He forced himself to ask casually, "What's your fax number? I'll send you the standard forms and she can start at once."

Ms. Cholmondeley immediately gave him the number, but Mycroft didn't bother to write it down. It was quite unnecessary for a man who had an eidetic memory.

**Friday, July 09, 2010**

Donna Noble, the unknowing object of Mycroft's dogged search, had started work in his own office building two days ago. When he'd first observed their new office temp on closed-circuit, he'd been relieved to see that she was indeed Donna, looking quite smart in a white shirtwaist and a navy blue business suit. For two days she'd walked into the building at eight thirty and for two days she'd walked out again at five—but he had yet to encounter her face to face.

He couldn't be too obvious about his interest in Donna, and unfortunately, the woman who ran the Documents Library had been most irate that he'd assigned her a temp without notifying her first. The elderly librarian could be quite formidable when she put her mind to it. She'd managed classified documents for the British Government for longer than he'd been alive, and by this time she could pull almost as many strings as he could.

Miss Silver had marched right into his office without an appointment. "I do not appreciate you foisting this woman on me sight unseen, Mr. Holmes."

Her mouse-grey hairbuns had quivered with indignation as she waved a copy of the work order in front of his nose. "I do not care for the implications of it—no, not at all."

"And finally…" Her sharp blue eyes had bored into him with a glare of total outrage. "My library does not employ, and never has employed, the Dewey Decimal System!"

Having made her opinions perfectly clear, Miss Silver had stalked out, shooting a basilisk glare at the hapless young man who was temporarily filling in for his P.A.

Miss Silver was only one of the reasons he hadn't dared to enter the library. The more important reason was—Donna still had two hands, and he couldn't imagine why. Did it mean that she'd never had a Time Lord's mind shoved into hers? Never set eyes on Firbourne House? Never met Mycroft Holmes?

It was the one scenario he hadn't allowed for—that he would track down Donna Noble and she wouldn't remember him.

Well, there was no time like the present—for ordinary mortals like him, at least. He had to know the truth, no matter how bad it was. As soon as Mycroft saw Miss Silver march off to the commissary for her morning tea break, he set down the Bond Air dossier and hastened out to confront Donna Noble.

Swiping his key card through the library's security card reader, Mycroft quietly entered Miss Silver's sanctum sanctorum. He'd discovered long before that the Documents Library was an excellent place to lurk when he didn't want to be hauled into meetings. Nobody ever looked for him there and better still, it was a dead zone for mobile phone signals.

Eight cubicles equipped with dedicated workstations and surprisingly comfortable chairs covered one wall. The rest of the library was filled with row after row of locked file cabinets that held the hardcopy confidential reports five government agencies either had not or dared not convert into digital form. One of those cabinets, he knew, housed the final draft of every report he'd produced for the last ten years.

But Donna was nowhere to be found. Since he hadn't seen her in the hall on closed-circuit, she had to be in the work room. He carded open the back door and walked into an environment that was completely unlike the softly-lit, elegantly-carpeted Documents Library. It was…fusty. Dust motes swirled under flickering fluorescent lights and cardboard boxes stacked almost to the ceiling were crammed so tightly that there was almost no space to move between them.

Hearing shuffling noises beyond the boxes, Mycroft cautiously edged his way down the narrow aisle between the stacks. It would too ironic if he were crushed to death under government secrets. At the back of the room he found Donna sorting papers on a metal table. A smudged cambric apron covered her from shoulder to knee and her ginger hair was falling down in damp ringlets.

"Whatever has Miss Silver got you doing?" he asked in blank surprise.

As soon as she heard his voice Donna spun around, her face lighting up with excitement.

"Mycroft! Oh-My-God—it's you! I've been hunting all over for you!"

So, she still knew his name. That eliminated the most pressing worry.

"Your mobile number doesn't work and I've been calling your mother's house for days!" he roared indignantly. "In this day and age, what sort of person doesn't have an answering machine?"

Donna's face darkened for a moment, but then she laughed at him. "Yeah, I was worried about you too."

Slightly embarrassed, Mycroft opened his mouth and closed it. An apology, he assumed, was in order, but instead of making one he blurted out, "What happened to your hand?"

"Oh, this one?"

Donna wiggled the fingers of her right hand. It looked perfectly fine, expect for the angry red scar on her wrist. "When the Inversion Catalyzer exploded, my hand got chopped off by a flying piece of metal—and interestingly enough, every scrap of the Doctor's mind was dragged along with it. The Doctor himself was absolutely amazed."

Mycroft rolled his eyes. "I'm sure he was."

"Believe it or not, my hand grew back in a matter of minutes. One last burst of regeneration energy, the Doctor told me." Donna shrugged eloquently. "Bet you didn't expect that one!"

No, he hadn't. He'd believed that she'd been maimed and he'd been worrying constantly about her. While he was trying to figure out a reply, he noticed that Donna was examining him.

"The question is, Mycroft, are you all right? I was so scared you were hurt that I started calling all the hospitals as soon as the Doctor dropped me off in London."

"Why would I be in hospital?" he asked dismissively. "You're the one who was in mortal peril."

Donna put her hands palms-down on the table and stared at him. "I was afraid you might have had a seizure or something. After you went through the TARDIS intersect you looked like a wrung-out dishrag. Like the Doctor said, the human mind can't absorb that much information all in a lump."

Mycroft drew himself up to his full height. "The Doctor's never met a man like me, I presume."

She gave him a skeptical glare and he grudgingly admitted the truth. "I've had some headaches and a few flashbacks, yes. But other than that, I'm fine."

Blinding migraine headaches and terrible flashbacks of rainbow ribbons that seemed to drill into his skull—but he wasn't about to admit to that.

"You were unlisted everywhere I looked!" Donna retorted in exasperation. "I knew you'd hate it, but I nearly called your brother Sherlock."

That, Mycroft was quite sure, would not have ended well. "Oh dear, I'm glad you didn't."

"At least your brother's got a web page!"

"A certain amount of secrecy is required for my job, I'm a-a-a-" Mycroft was about to embroider on his usual description of the 'minor government position' that he held when he was abruptly cut off by a convulsive sneeze.

"A-achooo!"

Blasted dust!

"Whatever are you working on here?" he demanded. "These boxes must be at least ten years old."

"You're right about that. They're old transition files from Hong Kong that were wished onto the library awhile back." Donna dropped a few more file folders onto the tallest stack. "Miss Silver told me to pull out the Top Secret documents and pack the rest for offsite storage."

Mycroft raised one eyebrow. "I wouldn't have thought she would allow a new contractor to handle classified documents. Miss Silver is usually far more cautious than that."

"She said she was sure you could arrange any clearance for me that was necessary. She also said I didn't look at all like what she'd expected." Donna added with a smirk, "What did she mean by that, do you suppose?"

"I wouldn't care to speculate," he answered with wounded asperity.

"Yeah, right."

He was uneasily aware that he would be told exactly what Miss Silver had meant—in some detail—if she walked through the door and found the two of them together.

"You do have your work to do, Donna, and. I shouldn't stay here too long. Shall we continue this conversation at dinner?"

A reminiscent smile crossed Donna's face. "That sounds so normal it's almost shocking. Friday and I'm going out to dinner tonight with a bloke. I must really be home again."

Mycroft didn't quite know how to respond to this. Had Donna just called him a 'bloke'? After a moment he said dryly, "Welcome back to London. Will 5:30 be all right?"

"Sure, that's fine." After a moment's thought she added, "Could we take my car, though? I don't want to leave it in the parking garage."

"You drove to work—for a job in Central London?" The usually-imperturbable Mycroft was almost startled. The London congestion charge made commuting by automobile to the City, already unspeakably troublesome, prohibitively expensive.

"Just for the first week." Donna gave him a conspiratorial wink. "Meet me in the parking garage—we don't want to upset Miss Silver."

With Donna it was always one new experience after another. Mycroft had quickly discovered that he was rather unused to being a passenger in someone else's car. If he hadn't caught himself, in fact, he would have climbed into the back seat out of habit.

The restaurant that he'd chosen was less than a mile away, but to get there they had to contend with London's rush hour traffic. Besides the incessant flow of frenetic commuters, there was a herd of stop-and-go tour buses, not to mention crowds of American tourists who usually looked the wrong way before they crossed the street.

"Take Pall Mall at Charing Cross," he ordered automatically.

"I know, I know, Mycroft. Your directions to the fish place were very clear."

Donna's hands were clenched on the steering wheel and she was silently mouthing remarks to her fellow drivers that she would probably have made out loud if he hadn't been there to hear them. It's not that she was an aggressive driver, just—argumentative.

"When you get to St. James—turn left."

The car jerked sharply. Donna's foot had suddenly hit the brake, then left it just as suddenly. Darting a glance to the right, Mycroft saw that she looked a bit unwell.

"Sorry—I was just startled for a moment," Donna said with a choked gasp.

"Quite all right. Rush hour traffic, after all."

Mycroft quickly sifted through his recollections of Donna's life. The words 'turn left' had brought back something very unpleasant to her. It seemed to be connected with the sound of screeching brakes, which would imply a traffic accident, but he couldn't recall what had happened.

From her strained expression, he could tell that Donna couldn't remember it either.

After swerving to miss a bicycle courier who had a suicidal streak, Donna turned onto St. James. The traffic was inching past a series of construction cones and they crept along for a few moments in complete silence.

"Mycroft," Donna finally ventured, "I know that the TARDIS matrix downloaded my life experiences into your brain. How much of it do you still remember?"

Mycroft was somewhat loathe to answer that question. The longer that he thought about it, the more that it sounded—creepy.

"Only bits and pieces, really. Most of them whipped by too fast for me to understand, although I'll admit that I did tell the Matrix to slow down for your experiences in the TARDIS." He had already realised, but did not say to her, that his eidetic memory was slowly knitting those bits and pieces together. "What brought this up?"

She gave him a sideways glance. "When I stepped out of the lift you were already waiting by my car. How did you know which one was mine?"

"You sound just like my brother Sherlock."

"I did look at his website, you know."

Another triumph of the science of deduction.

Mycroft shrugged. The stakes here were simply too high for him to risk a lie. "Your father left you a 2003 blue Mini-Cooper in his will because he didn't think you'd ever get around to buying a decent car for yourself."

"Bits and pieces, huh?" Donna shifted her gaze away from him and stared out at the surrounding traffic. "It's almost like you're reading my mind. You knowing all that, it's—it's—"

"Encroaching? Bizarre? Embarrassing?" He was accustomed to people who'd thought that about his superior perceptions and most people had far less reason for it.

Donna flushed slightly. "Well, embarrassing, mostly."

"Donna. You're a courageous woman who's lived a remarkable life. There are no dark secrets in your past. What difference does it make whether I know the name of your favourite television show or where you shop for knickers?"

For a moment Donna was taken aback by his frankness but then said defiantly. "Harrods. I buy my clothing at Harrods."

"Harrods?" he echoed, alarmed by a sudden sense of discontinuity. "When I met you at Firbourne House you were wearing clothes that you'd bought at Marks & Spenser."

"So? When I got back from outer space I decided to go upscale. Look, is that your fish place?"

It was indeed. In the middle of a row of grey Portland stone storefronts there was a black door flanked by two Greek columns, and above the door there was a royal blue awning that was stenciled in silver letters, "ICHTHYS."

"Yes, it is. There are a few parking places in the back. It's quite early—you may be able to squeeze in."


	2. A fish restaurant in Central London

As soon as Mycroft escorted Donna into the Mediterranean-styled interior of Ichthys, he saw that it was just as he remembered it—thank goodness. Other than the clinking of silverware and a soft murmur of voices, the restaurant was almost as silent as the Diogenes Club. Artificial candlelight from gold-sunfish chandeliers illuminated the tables but left their surroundings discreetly dim. Only six of those tables were filled so far and most of the diners were well-dressed elderly couples.

Whenever Mycroft hosted a confidential dinner in the City he always held it at Ichthys. Its owner and proprietor, Paul Melas, had been his staunch ally for years. Tonight the maitre d' was Paul's son Nikos. The younger Melas was unmistakable—tall and olive-skinned, with blue-black hair even curlier than Sherlock's. A muscle at the side of Nikos' face twitched almost imperceptibly when he spotted them.

Strolling up to the rostrum, Mycroft smirked at him. "I don't have a reservation tonight. Is the Abalone Room available?"

"I'm afraid not, sir. It's currently occupied by a party of American oilmen," Nikos answered in a toneless voice that had almost no Greek accent. "The Nereid Room is available, however."

"The Nereid Room will be fine, then. I'm surprised that the Abalone Room's already in use. It's a bit early for dinner, isn't it?" This was fashionable London and it was barely six.

"They came for lunch, Mr. Holmes. They're still working their way through the wine list."'

"Ah."

Nikos flicked a finger at one of his waiters to replace him at the rostrum, then guided them to the Nereid Room. The restaurant's private rooms were well-suited to discreet conversation, as Mycroft had good reason to know. Its sea-green walls were completely sound-proof and the whole establishment was regularly checked for bugs. The two walnut tables in this room had each been set for four people, but could easily be put together for dinner meetings.

After they'd settled themselves at the nearer table, Nikos enquired, "Would either of you care for an aperitif?"

Donna rolled her eyes sarcastically. "I'll let Mycroft order for me since he knows me so well."

"Not tonight, Nikos. For now, just Evian water," Mycroft said without missing a beat.

Nikos handed them their menus and departed swiftly.

The Nereid Room's wall friezes depicted cavorting Greek gods and goddesses instead of the Abalone Room's golden seashells. Donna gazed around at the walls and shivered a little. "How can you be so sure that I have no dark secrets, Mycroft? Everyone has secrets."

Mycroft stared levelly at her. She might as well have said 'Pompeii' out loud—the 'fixed point' where she and the Doctor had been compelled to trigger the eruption. "In an emergency situation you do what must be done—unlike most people, who merely wring their hands and do nothing. If that's a dark secret, Donna, it's my dark secret too."

"I thought you said that you were just a minor bureaucrat."

"I am, but I sometimes function outside my job description."

Donna waited for him to explain all this, but Mycroft was a past master at waiting out other people. Eventually she gave up and changed the subject. "That maitre d's scared to death of you. Whatever did you do to him?"

"Nikos and I have something of a history," Mycroft said offhandedly. "Fifteen years ago the police caught him selling drugs. I quashed the charges, but I told his father everything."

"His father was a friend of yours?"

"Paul's a friend now, yes." Mycroft heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I really had no practical alternative. Nikos was selling the drugs to my brother, and unlike Nikos, Sherlock was of age."

Upon hearing this tale of Sherlock's sordid past, Donna didn't bat an eyelash. It took a great deal to rattle Ms. Noble's equanimity.

When he surveyed the menu, Mycroft saw that the special was stuffed flounder. It was one of his favourites, but he didn't care to test his luck tonight. It would be so disheartening if it tasted different from what he remembered. Perhaps he should order the fried squid; he'd never tried that. He could recommend the stuffed flounder to Donna.

A waiter with Oriental features and large horn-rimmed eyeglasses who was wearing the traditional Greek shirt and trousers appeared with mineral water and a basket of pita bread. After giving him an evaluative glance, Mycroft attempted a salutation in the Korean language. Stepping back a few paces, the waiter pretended that he didn't understand what the peculiar Englishman was saying.

Unsurprised, Mycroft gave up and ordered. "The fried squid for me, and Greek salad with the dressing on the side. The stuffed flounder here is quite good, Donna."

"I'll have that then," Donna decided. "No salad dressing at all for me."

Their waiter collected their menus and departed even more hastily than he'd arrived.

"What was all that about?" Donna demanded.

Mycroft took a leisurely sip of his Evian water. "Oh—he's Korean. Probably in the country illegally."

"And you know this how?"

"From the shape of his eyeglass frames. It was a simple deduction. You saw Sherlock's website—he does this sort of thing all the time."

Donna wrinkled her nose. "Lucky for your brother that he was born in the 20th century, then."

"Because if he'd been born in the Middle Ages he'd have been burned as a witch?" Mycroft enquired mildly.

"I was going to say, they'd have stoned him for being possessed."

You always got something wrong, Mycroft told himself. "In Sherlock's case, demonic possession has always seemed a possibility."

For a few moments they occupied themselves with the pita bread and then Mycroft ventured a question that had been on the tip of his tongue for hours.

"So, how did you wind up traveling with the Doctor?"

"You don't already know?" Donna asked, surprised.

Mycroft shrugged. "Bits and pieces, remember."

Donna put her chin on the heel of her hand, pondered awhile, and then started to reminisce.

"I met him on the day of my wedding. The minister was standing at the altar waiting to marry us, the guests were all gathered at the church, I was dressed up and ready to go—then everything around me suddenly disappeared and I found myself in this funny place. Well, it was the control room of the TARDIS, you know what that looks like."

Yes, unfortunately, Mycroft did.

"The Doctor was in the control room—you know what he looks like, too—and he stared at me as if I was the strangest thing in the room. Me!"

Donna shook her head in amazement. "I yelled at him to put me back to where he'd gotten me from, and he shouted that whatever had happened, it certainly wasn't his fault. I wanted to get back to my wedding and he wanted to find out what was going on, so we charged off together, with me practically screaming in frustration the whole time."

Mycroft nodded. He couldn't recall the incident—at least not yet—but he was willing to bet that Donna had been hauling the Doctor along in her wake. "So what was going on?"

"When we got to the church I discovered that my friends were already having the reception without me. Some friends! The Doctor told me that I was full of Huon particles, whatever they are, and thought they might have something to do with H.C. Clements, the security firm where my fiancé and I worked."

Donna took a deep breath and continued in a grimmer voice. "So the Doctor got my fiancé to drive us to H.C. Clements and we found out that it wasn't the firm, it was the fiancé. Lance had doped my coffee with Huon particles so that a giant spider-alien who called herself the Empress of the Racnoss could recharge her power with the particles' energy."

A gruesome image boiled up in Mycroft's memory—Donna in a white wedding dress, suspended in the spiderweb of an alien monster that had laired up like Shelob in the very heart of London. But the alien was by no means the worst monster in this scenario. That would be Lance, the traitor.

"I'm so sorry, Donna." There was really nothing else that Mycroft could say.

"Yeah, me too," she sighed. "The Empress had so dazzled Lance with the idea of traveling through the universe with her that he agreed to help her even though she intended to destroy the world. But when the Doctor stopped her, the Empress gave Lance to her children."

The meaning of 'gave' in this context was clear enough to Mycroft. But that was insignificant compared to-

"Destroy the world!"

Donna nodded. "Yeah, she was going to destroy the Earth. I'm afraid I don't remember the technical details."

"I suppose I don't need them now." Mycroft pressed his fingertips against the sides of his forehead to ward off a doubtlessly psychosomatic headache. Later on he would have to re-evaluate his entire Threat Matrix. "I presume that's why you went off with the Doctor afterwards—to see the universe."

Once again, Donna surprised him.

"But I didn't go off with the Doctor—at least not then! He offered to take me with him, but I turned him down. I thought I should put my life back together first, right here on Earth." She snorted derisively. "Yeah, I really was that stupid. It didn't take me long to start kicking myself. The next time he showed up in London I wasn't fool enough to say no."

"And the next time he showed up-was there another crisis?" Mycroft was beginning to perceive a pattern here and he didn't care for it in the slightest.

"Well, ummmm…." Donna briefly considered the question. "Did you read the news stories a few years back about Adipose Industries?"

Mycroft's lips twisted in disgust. "Yes, I did. The company was peddling some sort of dangerous fat-reduction pills—completely unapproved, but its gullible clientele snapped them up anyway. There were some fatalities associated with the drug, I believe."

Donna shook her head. "It wasn't a drug. The pills were really tiny alien babies that absorbed the fat of their hosts as part of their life cycle."

Mycroft was hard put to repress a shudder. He'd nearly put an alien into his mouth! It would make him much happier to disbelieve every word that Donna was saying, but somehow it was impossible to doubt her in the slightest.

How very odd.

At that moment, much to his relief, their Korean waiter arrived with dinner and interrupted the conversation.

Donna's flounder smelled delicious and she fell to it enthusiastically, but Mycroft found himself pushing the squid around on his plate and separating out the chunks that didn't look so much like tentacles. The unfamiliar dish looked rather horrid and the 'pill' story had taken away his appetite anyway.

After awhile Donna enquired, "So, Mycroft, what's your job really? According to Miss Silver, half of the people in the building are intimidated by you. That doesn't sound like a 'minor government position' to me."

Mycroft set down his fork and considered what to say. Why not tell her the truth? What could he say that would possibly surprise Donna?

"My official title is 'Permanent Under-Secretary of Coordination & Operations,' and there are a great many civil servants above me in the organization chart. My colleagues have come to realise, however, that I am willing and able to make the decisions no one else wants to make, to see to it that they are implemented, and to deal with the consequences afterward."

Donna's eyes widened. "I didn't know people could do that in a bureaucracy!"

Mycroft stared back at her with all the arrogance he could muster. "Even you might be surprised by some of the things that I've made to happen—and even more important, the things that I've made not to happen. And I managed to do it all without wearing trainers."

Well, since he'd already brought up the alien elephant in the room… "So, do you expect that the Doctor will be returning for you any time soon?"

Donna pressed her lips together, then said reluctantly, "Not really, no. I had a good run, but now it's over. I'm sure the Doctor will turn up eventually, but by then he'll have found some new Sarah Jane or Martha or Rose. I told him there at the end that I wanted to travel with him forever, but that was never going to happen. I was just going looney."

You couldn't tell from her stoic expression, but Mycroft knew that it wasn't the TARDIS that Donna was missing—it was the Doctor. She was probably telling herself this very minute that she must have done something wrong to make him walk away. Donna had done everything for him that she knew how to do and he'd still turned his back on her. .

Caring was never an advantage. There was no other wound that could cut so deep.

"Surely you know that it wasn't your fault that he left, Donna. It was the Doctor's fault. Even my brother…."

Mycroft stopped and cleared his throat twice before he continued. "When Sherlock was just a boy he absconded with one of our father's hunting hounds and turned him into something of a pet. I believe the dog eventually trained Sherlock to throw sticks. No one would ever accuse my brother of sentimentality, but he still saw to it that old Siger was taken good care of until the end of his days. Even after Sherlock went off to uni they'd take long walks together when he came home in the summer."

"I know you're trying to be sympathetic but you're just making me feel worse!" Donna snapped back. Catching herself up, she said more calmly, "Yes, your brother took care of that dog all his life, but did he ever take Siger out hunting after he got old? Human beings age, Time Lords don't, and the Doctor has never learned how to handle that very well. Anyway, he didn't abandon me—he set me down on my own mother's doorstep with a winning lottery ticket in my hand!"

It was instantly obvious to Mycroft that he should have kept his mouth shut. Not because he was wrong, because he wasn't—but because it was dangerous to affront someone else's absent friend. At this point, Sherlock would have already shouted at him, "Get your fat nose out of my business."

He didn't want to hear Donna say that.

"I must apologise—I was a bit angry and I misspoke."

And a bit stressed, Mycroft admitted to himself. He was exhausted and he was beginning to make mistakes. "It's not very late but you look rather tired. Shall we make an early night of it?"

His dinner partner gave him a knowing smile. "Sure. Shall I drive you home?"

Mycroft hesitated. If he said 'no', Donna might think that he was reluctant because he took her for some sort of stalker. Which was absolutely ridiculous—he had security in place to deal with people like that. "Thank you. I'd appreciate that."


	3. A mews house in Mayfair

**Author's note**: 'Curious Incident' is obviously an AU in the most specific way possible-it is literally an alteration of the Sherlock universe. But I have to admit, I still haven't seen S3 (soon!) so I don't know in which ways the show contradicts me. (Except for the absence of Dr. Who, of course...)

By the time they drove up to Mycroft's house in Mayfair it was already dusk. There was a tiny parking strip close to his door that was large enough to accommodate Donna's Mini-Cooper—but only just. Emerging from the passenger side of the car, he tapped out a code on his mobile to temporarily deactivate the three nearest CCTV cameras. He didn't want to leave a permanent record of their arrival.

This mews house was the only place left in the world that Mycroft Holmes could still call 'home.' It was a sometimes awkward combination of the antique and the modern—wrought-iron gratings over bullet-proof glass windows, weathered brick walls protected by a shiny-new security system. He tapped his mobile again to unlock the front door and turn on the downstairs lights.

"My family has owned this place since the early Victorian era," he informed his companion with unconcealed pride. "It's the only Holmes property left from the old days. Everything else went to the death duties."

Donna had just hauled a bulky Burberry bag from the back seat and was scanning up and down the quiet street. "Your family's lived here for a hundred and fifty years? That's pretty impressive."

"We didn't start out living in it," Mycroft admitted. "It's a mews house, so it began as a stable, but after it was converted, yes. Most of my neighbors have been here for decades. So far we've managed to keep out the absentee Saudis, although we do have a millionaire, a cosmetics CEO, and a hedge-fund manager."

"But your brother has a flat in Baker Street."

Mycroft gave his head a rueful shake, then ushered Donna into his home before the CCTV cameras could flick back on. "Of course he does. Sherlock would never dream of residing under the same roof as me."

The décor in the foyer was somewhat old-fashioned and stuffy, but Mycroft liked it that way. The original wallpaper had not survived the installation of the new security setup, but fortunately Anthea had found a paper with an almost identical rose pattern. He waved vaguely down a hallway lit with bright LED lamps in refurbished gaslight sconces. "The dining room and kitchen are to the left; the parlor and the library are on the right. Make yourself at home in the parlor and I'll bring us espresso."

Hoping that Donna would not pursue him into the kitchen, Mycroft departed to the left. His espresso machine was supposed to be foolproof but sometimes he had to fiddle with it.

After a few moments he joined Donna in the parlor, wheeling two cups and a coffee service on an antique Georgian tea cart. She had placed her bag on the Hepplewhite sofa and was examining the pictures on the far wall.

"Two lumps, no cream, right?" Mycroft asked. When Donna gave him an exasperated glare he added blandly, "I watched you drinking coffee on the commissary CCTV."

"You have quite the eye for detail, Mycroft," she replied with only a slight edge to her voice. Sitting down on the sofa, she accepted the cup from his hands. "I was just wondering—why are there no portraits of your family in the parlor of your old family home?"

Mycroft sat down beside her and glanced around at the walls. The pictures he'd hung in the parlor were duller than dull; even he found it difficult to recall them. A watercolor of Mont Blanc, two black and white photos of wizened pine trees, and a very plebeian oil still-life of three lemons in a basket.

"Because I sometimes entertain my colleagues in this room."

Donna added her two lumps of sugar as she considered his statement. "You're a very private sort of a man. Maintaining complete control means everything to you, doesn't it?"

Mycroft tossed three sugar lumps into his own cup and stirred fiercely. "In a word, yes."

Pursing her lips, Donna thought about that for a while and finally said, "I'm so sorry, Mycroft. What I put you through there at the tennis court—it must have been the worst thing that you could have possibly imagined."

"You weren't the one who put me through that." Mycroft was pleased to notice that when he replied, his voice was completely controlled.

"I suppose not. If you'd just let go of my hand you probably wouldn't have been pulled into-" Donna stopped dead. "You can't be blaming the TARDIS—it's just a machine, you know."

Rolling his eyes in haughty dismissal, Mycroft didn't answer.

Donna kept on digging. "The Doctor? You blame the Doctor? I should think that you'd understand better than most that it was a life-or-death decision no one else would make—that no one else could make."

"Yes, he saved the universe," the beleaguered bureaucrat snapped. "I know that. Fine. I'm sure I ought to be grateful."

Mycroft set his espresso cup down onto the floor so he wouldn't spill it. His throat had closed up and he could feel his hands shaking.

Donna's voice was calm but intense. "Tell me what's hurting you."

He flinched, but said nothing. What could he possibly say?

"You've got to let me help," she said to him.

But he was a private sort of man—hadn't she just told him she understood that?

"If you don't tell me," Donna went on relentlessly, "then who can you tell?"

Mycroft could feel his ice shattering all around him, he had nothing left to protect him, and worst of all, she was absolutely correct. There was no one else that he could tell.

Dropping his hands onto his knees, fingers splayed, Mycroft started to speak in a voice that was almost inaudible.

"Back there at the tennis court… I was positive that I was about to be deleted. Not merely killed or destroyed, but erased, obliterated, turned into a never-was. It never even occurred to me that the universe could be rebooted and that I—a man whose mind had been uniquely shaped by that specific universe—could possibly survive."

He sat silent for a moment and looked down at his trembling hands.

"And the fact is, I still can't believe it. The Mycroft Holmes in that tennis court had never gazed up at a star, had no idea what the word 'constellation' meant, had never imagined the concept of a space program. The Mycroft Holmes of this world has always taken these things for granted."

Mycroft stared into the eyes of Donna Noble, the only woman in the universe who could possibly understand what he was talking about. Her eyes were almost as remarkable as the woman herself—their irises were double-ringed in blue and brown.

"So tell me, Doctor Donna. Which Mycroft Holmes am I?"

Donna's eyebrows lowered in a frown as she tried to puzzle out an answer. She wasn't about to let him go down without a fight. When he realised that, Mycroft couldn't help but feel a little hope.

After thinking hard for several moments, she ultimately told him, "You're both of them. I don't remember how this timey-wimey business works, but I know you're both of them."

She placed her palms on top of his hands, and disconcerting though it was, the sensation of warmth on his frozen fingers was rather comforting. "I don't believe that you're worrying about the Mycroft who grew up in this world—the man that you're worried about is the Mycroft from the World Without Stars. But the man who was in the tennis court is the man that I met! I can remember him, can't you?"

Staring right back at him, she ticked off her explanation point by point.

"I remember how he invited me to walk out with him on that bloody hot day and then tried to pull the wool over my eyes."

"I remember when he met an alien time machine that was smarter and more powerful than anything he could have ever encountered—and immediately started to argue with it."

"I remember that he held me tight as I lay there dying and never let me see that he was scared."

"I remember that man perfectly and he's sitting right beside me!"

Mycroft didn't believe for a moment that he would accept what was essentially an ad hominem argument from anyone but his Doctor Donna—but he would accept it from her. She'd been through it all and she understood what he'd been through.

He'd always known that he was a stubborn man, but at least he wasn't a stubborn fool. "You're right. I remember that man too," he said with a sigh, enveloped all at once by an incredible sense of relief.

Donna smiled brilliantly and threw her arms around him in a joyous hug. She had pulled him out of black horror and that was triumph enough for her. It was so very like her.

But before Mycroft could react, he felt her shiver and crumple in on herself. What was going on now? When she looked up at him again, he could see in her haunted eyes that a memory she'd managed to push away from her had shoved forward to attack.

Whitefaced, she muttered almost inaudibly, "Oh Mycroft, I can remember it all now. I was dying and it was horrible, so horrible..."

Mycroft grabbed at her hands to steady her, but Donna pulled them away and covered her mouth with a trembling fist. "You were afraid because you thought that you were going to be deleted, but I knew that my body was dying and that my spirit wasn't being drawn into the light. I could feel my mind being uploaded into the TARDIS Matrix. I was being turned into a machine!"

He should have known, Mycroft told himself bitterly—of course there would be still more horrors to come. He couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to be absorbed by a computer. If that blasted Doctor had been just five minutes faster…

Donna needed his help, and for a blessed change, this time he knew how to cope with another person's feelings. What she needed right now was someone to hold her tight and prove to her that she wasn't alone. He could do that for her and he would do that for her. Without bothering to analyse the situation further, Mycroft put his arms around her and squeezed. She stopped quivering almost immediately and allowed her weary head to sink onto his shoulder.

"You're not a machine, Donna Noble," he whispered fiercely. "You're a woman, and you're alive, you're so alive."

In spite of everything that had happened to him, Mycroft realised that he felt… content. The stars were shining in the sky exactly as they were supposed to, the Earth was revolving safely around the Sun, and the woman in his arms was not likely to die any time soon. Somehow things would work out.

After a little while, however, he began to worry whether Donna might be feeling a bit embarrassed. It would be so like her to fret—she never wanted to appear needy. She was almost like Sherlock in that respect. On the spur of the moment, he tilted up her chin with his thumb and two fingers so he could see the expression on her face—

—and to his complete surprise, Donna lifted her chin up still further and kissed him right on the lips.

Wait, what? He hadn't intended this at all! But he couldn't say that to Donna. Good heavens, it would completely humiliate her.

When Mycroft looked back at the things that he'd done in either of his two lives, what he most regretted were the times when it simply hadn't been possible to give the people he cared about whatever it was that they wanted. But this time he could. Donna didn't want him to overturn a perfectly rational decision—she just wanted him to kiss her.

What he wanted was to have Donna put aside the dreadful experiences she'd endured—that they'd both endured—and to make her believe that life was still worth living. That's what they both wanted, really.

After a second or two of thought, Mycroft framed Donna's now-nervous face with both hands and pressed his lips quite deliberately on the center of her forehead, on her closed eyelids, and finally on her own lips. The corners of her mouth came up in a sweet smile.

That was Donna for you—when a man showed that he actually appreciated her, it always made her feel happy. Mycroft kissed her lips once again.

Up close, her hair smelled like violets and her lips were wonderfully soft. Kissing Donna would be no trouble. One of her hands crept up to trace the edges of his own lips and without thinking, he opened his mouth and touched his tongue to her finger.

Mmmmmm…...

It had been longer than Mycroft liked to admit since his last impromptu snog on a couch, but he still remembered the procedure. First, you made sure that the girl was comfortable. You made some innocuous small talk, you cuddled her a little bit, and then you moved in.

Leapfrogging unknowingly to Step Two, Donna whispered into his ear, "Oh Mycroft, I'm so glad that you found me."

Mycroft, however, was still mired at Step One. He was trying to get comfortable and the authentically-restored Hepplewhite wasn't particularly ergonomic. He was sure he'd be all right, though—for the first time in days, he wasn't being gnawed by doubt and worry. Sliding his arm around Donna's waist, he sighed with relief. "I thought that I had maimed you. I'm so very glad that I didn't."

When he realised what he'd just said, Mycroft froze in horrified embarrassment. Upon what planet would something like that constitute small talk? He wanted to kick himself—hard—but Donna just laughed and murmured, "Shush."

And then she kissed him again.

One kiss led to another, and then another. By the time he and Donna finally surfaced for air, they were both panting and overheated. If they continued much further along this road, there was a real chance that he might forget himself.

The part of Mycroft's mind that never stopped evaluating tactical scenarios had an immediate answer for that. Forget himself? If there was one thing that he needed—that they both needed—it was to forget themselves. Even if only for a night.

When both his intellect and his instincts agreed, it was a reasonable assumption that they were correct. Taking a deep breath, Mycroft nerved himself up to the fullest, deliberately dropped his self-control, and let himself go.

It was a very strange thing to allow his feelings to rule him, but it was what he had made up his mind to do. One of his hands was soon blindly wandering down Donna's body, while the other rose up to fondle her breast. He wanted to touch her all over—he wanted to know all the parts of her that his memories didn't cover. Right now he even wanted her to know him.

Clutching Donna even tighter, Mycroft mumbled, "I don't believe that I mentioned anything to you about the upstairs floor."

"Are you crazy? Why are you bringing that up now?" Donna grumbled into his neck. Then she sighed in resignation. "All right, I'll bite. What've you got upstairs that's so important?"

"Umm… bedrooms, mostly."

Donna's eyes shone up at him like stars. "Why don't you show me one?"


	4. The dining room in Mycroft's home

**Saturday, July 10, 2010**

It was early Saturday morning—8:15 a.m. to be precise—and Mycroft Holmes was making breakfast in his mother's kitchen. It was his kitchen now, of course, but other than replacing the old refrigerator and putting in a state-of-the-art convection microwave oven, he'd never gotten around to changing the appliances that Mummy had put in.

Donna, as he recalled, only permitted herself such high-calorie indulgences as pancakes on special occasions. He would prefer to assume that sharing his bed would count as one. Beyond the comfort of the previous night, they'd both achieved exactly what they'd set out to do. He had hauled Donna down to Earth again, alive and well, while she had—as she'd put it—gotten him to stop worrying himself half to death.

As Mycroft flipped the last two pancakes onto the warming tray he realised that he was humming. This morning he was feeling quite himself—confident and chipper and capable of staring down the world. He needed to hang onto that feeling at all costs. If he slid back into the slough of despond he would be of absolutely no use to anyone—especially to himself.

The sound of running water upstairs had just ceased, which meant that Donna would be coming down to look for him very soon. He would have to complete his breakfast preparations immediately. Mycroft set the tray of pancakes onto the tea cart alongside the Wedgewood tea service, then wheeled the cart into the dining room. He'd set the table already and shoved all the paper-sorters that usually cluttered the table into the china cabinet and out of sight. Working through dinner when he ate at home had become something of an unfortunate habit.

For once Mycroft wasn't wearing his usual three-piece suit. This was Saturday, after all, and he'd already called the office to say that he wouldn't be showing up today. After due deliberation, he'd decided to dress in casual houndstooth trousers and a fuzzy grey jumper. Even the most dangerous of men, he'd discovered, could appear harmless and charming if they were wearing the right jumper.

He'd just shifted the pancake tray onto the table when he heard Donna's voice. "Mycroft? Where are you?"

Stepping into the hall, Mycroft called out, "In the dining room."

His breath caught just a little when he saw Donna peering down at him from the middle of the stairs. The woman was no great beauty, she was close to middle age, and she could afford to lose a pound or two—but when he saw her, the first thing that came to his mind was sex.

It looked to him like it was the first thing that had come to her mind too.

No words could express how he felt about that—so he simply told her, "Come on down to the dining room—I made breakfast."

As she hurried downstairs to meet him, the second thing that came to his mind was—did Donna usually carry around a spare set of clothes in that Burberry of hers? That was the same navy skirt she'd worn the day before, but that she was wearing a pink plisse shell today, not a white shirtwaist.

Donna's eyes widened in surprise when she stepped inside and saw what he'd prepared for her. "Oh Mycroft, you didn't have to make pancakes!"

Mycroft frowned almost imperceptibly. Wasn't he special enough? "If you'd rather, there's low-fat yogurt in the fridge."

"Oh no, pancakes are fine," she answered hastily. But she didn't sit down to eat them.

He was quite sure that his pancakes were fine—he'd followed the recipe in Mummy's cookbook to the letter. What could the problem be?

A moment of reflection gave him the answer. Donna wasn't used to having things done for her. Being served made her nervous.

"I usually prefer tea in the morning," he remarked in a casual voice. "Would you care to be mother?"

"I'd be glad to." As she busied herself with the tea things, Donna's uncertain look disappeared. "Is that real maple syrup you've got there?"

"Straight from Ottawa. It arrived via diplomatic pouch."

She thought that he was joking and laughed.

Once they'd sat down to breakfast, Mycroft noticed that Donna kept sneaking fascinated glances at the paintings on the east wall. His relatives could certainly be daunting en masse, whether they were flesh and blood or paint and canvas.

"I removed the family portraits from the sitting room but I couldn't just put them in storage somewhere. And once the aunts heard that I was actually hanging them, I started to receive more and more in the post," Mycroft commented wryly.

Torn between curiosity and the pancakes, Donna took two quick bites of the latter and then asked, "So how far back do these pictures go?"

"Only to the late seventeen hundreds—my family isn't particularly ancient. Out of all these portraits, the only painting worth anything artistically is the Tissot in the corner. I believe that the subject, Annabelle Holmes, was actually one of his students for awhile."

Mycroft indicated a picture of a young lady in sprig muslin whose hair was even redder than Donna's. Most of his forebears had hair ranging from darkest auburn to outright carrots. As usual, Sherlock was an aberration—he took after Mummy's side of the family.

"That old fellow in the wingtip collar is Jacob Holmes, who made a fortune speculating on stock right after Waterloo." Something about his ancestor's dour expression and pursed lips had always seemed unnervingly familiar to Mycroft.

Next he indicated a pair of sepia photographs of two young men in uniform. "The studio photos over the mantelpiece, obviously, were taken much later. The one on the left is my great-granduncle, Lt. Mycroft Holmes, whose entire military career consisted of three days at the Battle of the Somme. That dashing pilot on the right is my grandfather, Captain Sherrinford Holmes, who survived almost to the end of the Battle of Britain. My grandmother raised her children all alone, struggling to keep together as much of the family property as she could."

Donna sighed. "I'm sorry, Mycroft. I know it happened a long time ago, but—I'm sorry."

Mycroft's lips twisted sardonically. "They both chose to serve their country, and I'm sure they were terribly brave. My father, on the other hand, was a civilian. He had his faults but at least I always knew that I could reach him at his club."

Mycroft had absolutely no desire to dwell on all that, so he abruptly changed the subject to the topic he'd been wondering about—where had that pink plisse blouse come from? "So, do you generally carry around a change of clothing for the first week of a new job?"

Donna served herself another pancake and said placidly, "No, the extra clothes are from my Doctor-hunting kit."

Mycroft nearly spilled his tea. "I thought you said that you didn't expect to see him any time soon."

Donna directed a quizzical look at him. "I wasn't hunting for the Doctor this time—I was hunting for you! I wound up doing pretty much the same things, though—following up every lead, poking my nose into places I didn't belong, and chatting up people who didn't want to answer my questions."

"What sort of people?" It sounded to Mycroft like he had yet another detective on his hands.

"Oh—metropolitan police officers, emergency room doctors, morgue attendants, people like that."

Good heavens, she'd really thought that he might be in trouble. It was fortunate that she hadn't spoken to anyone who knew his brother—that really might have caused some trouble. Well, Sherlock would have caused trouble, anyway. "In the course of your investigations," Mycroft asked carefully, "did you run into any… discrepancies?"

"Discrepancies?" Donna looked blank for a moment until she figured out what he was driving at. "Oh—you mean differences in the timeline. Not in regard to you, no. I'd just met you, after all, and I hadn't known you before in any of the three timelines."

Three timelines? Mycroft flinched at the thought, but had to acknowledge that her count was correct. The world they'd started out in, the World Without Stars, and finally the world that they'd ended up with. He couldn't remember the original timeline himself but he had some 'bits and pieces' from Donna.

Mycroft pushed back at the beginning of a headache. "Doesn't it bother you to know that many of your memories are no longer operative?"

"You mean like the war against the Daleks?" Straight-faced, Donna folded her napkin meticulously into a triangle and pushed it off to one side. "I think about that a lot. I often wonder whether anything that I did really mattered in the end."

Mycroft had found it surprisingly difficult to find out what had actually occurred during that war. There were no official reports and the news articles written at the time were rubbish. And he didn't dare ask anyone, even his own PA, "Do you remember when we were invaded by the Daleks?" It would make him sound completely barmy. Of course she would remember that—everyone remembered that!

Nevertheless, there was one fact that he was completely sure of. "If you hadn't stopped the Daleks when you did and how you did, there would have been nothing left for the Doctor to reboot," he pronounced with certainty.

Donna gave him a wry smile. "I don't know whether to feel complimented or terrified. How can you possibly be so sure?"

"Simple logic. Logic is my specialty."

"It's a funny thing—in all the time I traveled with the Doctor, I never heard him say that."

Mycroft had to bite back the first response that came to his tongue. There were more important things that he wanted to talk about. "You travelled with the Doctor, Donna. Could he have anything to do with why two of our recent Prime Ministers never held office in the World Without Stars?"

"Which two?" Seeing the appalled expression on his face, Donna said defensively, "I've been looking for you the last few days. I didn't have time to read the papers."

Not a bad excuse, Mycroft told himself. "Harriet Jones and Harold Saxon."

"Ummmm…." Donna wrinkled her brow in thought. "I'm pretty sure that Harriet Jones knew the Doctor. She communicated with him while we were at the Medusa Cascade. Did the Daleks kill her this time too?"

Mycroft quickly stifled his initial double-take. "No, I checked up on her just yesterday. She's retired from elective office and she's now chairing a commission on nursing homes. What about Saxon?"

Donna winced a little. "When I think about Harold Saxon it makes my head hurt. That probably means he was involved with something the Doctor really, really didn't want me to remember."

"I usually find that paracetamol works better than aspirin for Doctor-induced headaches," Mycroft advised dryly. "This is quite helpful. It would be much more useful for you to spend your time tracking down discrepancies instead of sorting through mouldy transition records. Next week I'll see about having you transferred to one of the research units."

Donna's response was rather surprising. "Oh, you don't have to pay me to do that! I'd be glad to help you on my own time."

No one in the world had ever said that to him. Not even the people who worked for him.

Although taken slightly aback, Mycroft applied a bit of his usual manipulative talent to push for what he wanted. "Well, in that case… Today is Saturday. Perhaps we could pop down to the British Library and see what we can discover—make a day of it, perhaps."

"I'd like that, but believe it or not, I'm not completely dim. I did notice a couple of funny things over the last few days. As a matter of fact I've been jotting them down in a notebook. Would you care to see it?"

Would he care to see it? Mycroft was hard put to conceal his intense covetousness. "Yes, I rather think I would."

Donna stood up and looked a trifle embarrassed. "It's…umm, upstairs… in my handbag. I'll just be a moment and then we can go out."

As he watched Donna head up to his bedroom, Mycroft was well aware that it would take more than 'just a moment'. Once she got hold of that monstrosity she called a handbag she'd want to put on lipstick, and maybe powder her nose, and then everything would start to cascade.

Which was just as well, because he needed to make some important decisions, and he needed to make them soon.

Mycroft Holmes took a look around the dark-walled room in which all of his forebears were staring down at him. Even the room was brighter when Donna was in it.

He had told Donna that he wanted to transfer her to one of his research units—and he did want to do that—but the fact was, he hadn't been covering his tracks very well when he hired her. Sooner or later, people were bound to figure out that he and Donna had some sort of a 'relationship.'

A man in his position could not become 'pals' with an office temp without stirring up an increasingly damaging storm of salacious speculation. He could stand down MI5 if he had to, but he couldn't defeat gossip.

One obvious option would be to continue their investigations as Donna had already suggested—off the books. After the work was done, Mycroft supposed, he could simply shake her hand, thank her for her efforts, and bid her adieu.

Yes, he could do that. A black silhouette in a silver frame glowered at him from the top of the mantelpiece. He would be, as his father might have put it, a complete cur. But he could do that.

And he would be taking an awful risk.

His current set of problems was unlikely to just go away.

These temporal 'discrepancies' would continue to crop up at the worst possible moment.

A universe that was unexpectedly stuffed with hostile aliens would persist in attacking Great Britain in spite of anything he might do.

And more often than he cared to think, he would probably awaken bolt upright in his bed after undergoing another nightmare about being deleted.

What might he deduce about the nature of his current situation?

Mycroft held his right hand in front of his face and carefully examined it. No, it wasn't trembling. It wasn't trembling today, that is.

John Watson had turned out to be such a useful man.

On the day that Sherlock first met him, John had saved his life. John had cut down on his younger brother's worst eccentricities. He had done his inept best to retrieve the Bruce-Partington plans. He had stalwartly endured many fruitless talks with a remarkably unintuitive therapist who had nevertheless written quite informative case notes.

A man in Mycroft Holmes' position didn't dare place himself into the hands of a therapist and he was not such a fool as to think he could self-diagnose. But at least after reading the woman's notes he knew what he needed to worry about.

And there was only one person in the world that he would ever be able to confide this to.

Considering his options for the future, Mycroft found most of them quite unpalatable. Too risky, or too unlawful, or simply too ridiculous. If he tried that one, Sherlock would laugh. If he tried the other, Donna would laugh.

Of course, there was always one option that required no explanation or justification whatsoever. He could simply marry her. Most of his acquaintances would find it so entertaining to think he had 'fallen in love' that they would cheerfully shout down any naysayers.

But wasn't marriage rather an extreme measure just to ensure Donna's continued presence in his life? No, he had to acknowledge—that was the exact point of it, after all.

Mycroft Holmes had always considered the greatest risk in marriage to be intimacy—the extreme danger inherent in being known. Well, that ship had already sailed.

He'd never actually rejected the concept of matrimony per se, but by the time a woman had been properly vetted, she usually disliked him. Vetting wouldn't be necessary this time, though—he'd known Donna all her life.

Given these factors, it truly seemed that it would be worthwhile to count up the pluses and minuses of this rather extreme option.

On the minus side, there was the problem of class. The new England was much the same as the old England, although less honest. Still, if the heir to the British throne could marry a commoner, a bureaucrat could certainly marry an office professional.

There was no doubt that Donna could be loud, argumentative, and stubborn—a minus in most men's books. Fortunately, he had already figured out the countermeasure to that. If you paid attention to what Donna was saying and took what she told you seriously, she quieted down almost at once.

It was also true that Donna had very few of the diplomatic skills required of a good political wife—except, now that he thought about it, with aliens. To be able to cope with extraterrestrial monsters surely compensated for any possible inadequacies at garden parties.

On the plus side, she was almost certainly his last chance to carry on the Holmes family name. Donna had always wanted to have children, and he could give her real ginger babies instead of those horrible fakes in that Future Library.

Moreover, Donna actually liked him. It would be nice to have someone in the family who was on his side for a change.

There was also the pleasant fact that the two of them were physically compatible. No, he shouldn't distance himself now from what he'd felt the night before. They were splendid together. She had been both ardent and appreciative; he had been the uninhibited lover he'd always wished he could be.

Leaning back in a chair that had been in the family longer than he had, Mycroft carefully reviewed his analysis of the situation. If a British diplomat were to request his advice about a treaty with conditions this favorable, he would recommend that it be accepted at once. After checking it for the usual trick clauses, of course.

This was not an affair of state, however, but a matter between two people, and even for him, human beings could be unpredictable. It would be only prudent to spend some time and effort evaluating this 'relationship.' A month or two, he thought, should more than suffice. He didn't want to let this particular state of affairs 'hang fire' for much longer than that.

Mycroft Holmes knew that he had never been a romantic sort of man—the usual sentimental words always stuck in his throat. In this situation, however, he didn't believe that he'd need them. What Donna wanted most was to be important, to mean something to somebody. It would be easy enough for him to tell her that—it was the simple truth.

Smugly, he reached up to straighten his tie and then recalled that he wasn't wearing one. He was already beginning to congratulate himself. To marry the important woman in the universe would be the ultimate coup, even though nobody else in the whole world would ever know what he had accomplished.

Which was just the way that he liked it.

THE END

A note from the author: So here I am, finishing up a story that was most definitely contradicted by what we saw in Season Three-assuming that you choose to believe that the characters were always telling us the truth, which I actually don't. Both Sherlock and Mycroft always like to keep a few secrets up their sleeves-if they'll lie to John, they'll lie to us.

But what I'd really like to know is—should we call this a love story? Comments, please...


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